24. January 2012 by Gore Wehner.

Recently a friend of mine had questions regarding a picture book her friend was considering self-publishing. My friend S. Arthur Yates told me I should post my answers to her questions on my blog. Eureka. A built-in blog post, what more could I ask for? (Besides a publishing contract with a major publishing house, of course.) So here are the questions and my answers:

[My friend would] like to know the steps and how to self-publish.

It varies. There are a lot of ways to self-pub. The route most people seem to be taking is on their own through Kindle, Smashwords, Nook etc. But that is more for novels than it is for picture books. Also, it’s an ebook form, not hard copy. Right now there are picture books in ebook format, but I don’t think it’s caught on just yet. But she can also self-publish through a print on demand company or purchase book packaging options. The downfall is the upfront costs of some of these methods. Have her google print on demand publishers to start with.

She’s wondering if she would get more of a profit if she self-publishes instead of going through an agent.

It’s a crap shoot. It’s tough to find an agent for a picture book, usually you can deal directly with publishing houses. The good part of going this route is that a professional editor helps with the book, making the book more marketable and improves the writing quality of the piece. A book with many poor reviews doesn’t sell, so having a good editor is crucial. If she does her own artwork for the book (or has a friend do it) and the work is too amateur, the publishing house will provide a professional artist for her book. The cut will be 50/50, if I’m not mistaken. (Note: I do not advise anyone to find an artist for their picture book. Publishers have in-house artists. I’ve been told by an editor at a major publishing house that they prefer to have an unknown author work with a well-known artist or a well-known author with an unknown artist…although a well-known artist and well-known author is the biggest win-win for the house.)
On the other side of the coin, it takes two years or longer for a picture book to hit the bookstore shelves so you might think of it as self-publishing can put it out there sooner. Plus, picture books are hard to sell to traditional publishing houses. They have to be top of the game. If she found an agent for the work, she’d receive an advance most likely, but 15% of the sale goes to the agent. HOWEVER traditional publishing houses have a good reputation and she will have a tough time selling a self-pubbed book to a library, and bookstores generally won’t sell them at all (except as ebooks). So potential sales go down the drain.

She’s wondering how long the process takes to self-publish.

This also varies on if you use print on demand, publishing packages, or go the ebook route (which can be as short as a day).

She’d also like to know if it would be possible for her to get the rights to her story.

Again, this depends on what type of self-pubbing she goes with. Have her read her contract over carefully. A literary lawyer is a good idea, too. I believe with ebooks the rights belong to the author, but have her really look into that.

If you had guidelines about how to self-publish, I think it would be good for her so she can start the process and learn about it.

Okay, she should start by picking up books on self-publishing. I like The Indie Author Guide, although some of the information is already outdated what with the ebook boom. Still, it explains all the different ways she can go, plus how to design her cover and market the book.

My advice is three-fold. First, if she can attend a children’s writers conference it would be beneficial. They often have editors and agents to pitch work to, as well as something called “first pages” where editors critique the first page of authors’ work. Sometimes you can pay a second fee and have a private ten minute consultation with an author, agent or editor in your exact field. I’ve done this and it’s worth every penny spent. (Google children’s writers conferences and also have her check out SCBWI.org.) Also, if she isn’t in a picture book critique group, she needs to find one. Third, she should try traditional publishing houses and/or agents before going the self-pub route in my opinion. It’s the only way to get her work on a store bookshelf, plus if she’s worried about money and the value of her story, that’s the best way to go. Most authors make very little starting out no matter what, but a traditional publishing house can help build an author’s career.

There you have it. My advice. If anyone has any other advice to add or disagrees with me, I’d love to hear. Shoot me an email or comment on this post.

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6. January 2012 by Gore Wehner.

I have exciting news…I’ve just completed final edits with CICADA’s editor. (http://www.cicadamag.com/) If you aren’t familiar with this magazine, it’s part of the Cricket Magazine Group. CICADA is for teen readers, and CICADA also publishes stories written by teens as well.

My story is titled “Hamster, Vietnam War and Me,” and let me give you a little insight into the story.

Years ago I attended a writer’s conference. During a writing workshop, an author had us visualize something true that happened to us as children, and sketch it onto paper. I was elated. After all, sometimes spontaneously writing a story can be challenging, especially when one is worried they’ll have to share said story. But drawing something? Ha! No problemo.  (Did I mention I draw very well?)

As I stared at my blank piece of paper, I realized I still had the same problem I had when sitting in front of the computer with a blank word doc. What story should I tell?

I finally decided to share a tale about the time I was awakened by a kitten tugging on my bedspread. I remember glancing out the window, thinking maybe it managed to squeeze in through the screen somehow  (despite living in a second floor apartment). Turned out that my parents’ friend Terry Robinson had showed up in the night, bringing a cat and kittens with him. Pets weren’t allowed in the apartment complex, so my sister and I went gaga over our furry visitors.

After sharing the story behind my picture, the author (and I apologize–I can’t remember her name) told me I should consider using my memory in a story.

Really? Hmm.

And so, the idea percolated in my head until I finally had the motivation to use it. The story plot itself is purely fiction, although the protagonist is named after my sister. This story is my shout-out to her. But the events in the story only graze across the surface of my own life. I changed the cats to hamsters, and hope I don’t offend cat lovers everywhere because I declined to place them in my story. But it’s for the best. Honestly.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, you can read my story in the March/April 2012 issue of CICADA. I can’t wait!

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10. December 2011 by Gore Wehner.

First off, a pitiful excuse. When I started off looking for agents, I had no clue what I was doing. I thought I did. I thought, in fact, I knew everything. I’d read books, you know. But books don’t tell you everything. After all, those authors did things the correct way, thus the reason you are reading their book. So, in my defense, it wasn’t complete ignorance. It was simply learning the ropes. I figured I’d give you, my faithful reader, the tips I wished I’d been given.

When I began my search for an agent to represent my work, it was the days of snail-mail. Email queries were uncommon. I sent off five queries at a time. The rejections trickled in. Here’s what I did right: I looked up the agents in Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents. How I studied that book! I marked agents who might be a good fit with slices of Post-It notes. (Since those days, Post-It Brand notes invented it’s own Page Markers. I buy them buy the bunch.) Then I carefully selected whom to query. My queries themselves were all right. Nothing to rave about, mind you. But all right. So at least I’m not embarrassed about that.

When email queries became popular, I decided to try it. After all, what is better than saving myself a few bucks and getting my queries into agents’ hands? Only ice cream with marshmallow topping is better, I tell you. (Feel free to disagree. But I digress.) Unfortunately, what I didn’t realize is that response time is much quicker via email. I assumed I had a good month before I’d get a response. So I pitched a new novel, one I hadn’t edited yet. It was still in its infant stage, a whiny little draft.

I received rejections within the hour. Amazed, I wondered if perhaps I should get going on that editing. Sure enough, I received a response that day requesting the synopsis and first three chapters. A day after I sent that out, the agent requested the full manuscript.

Damnation.

A 12-hour marathon ensued. I enlisted the help of my mother, an English major. We exhausted ourselves getting that draft presentable. This brings me to Tip#1: Make sure your novel is complete, edits and all, before querying an agent.

Here is the other thing I did wrong. This is the same agent, by the way, so I’m not leaping into new territory here. I didn’t read the submission guidelines on-line that said they weren’t taking on unpublished authors. I got lucky this time. He requested my work anyway. Maybe he was feeling generous. Maybe he wasn’t overly busy at the time. But if you are going to query an agent, and I’ll make this Tip #2: Check out their Agency’s website and see if they are taking new, unpublished authors.

Here is the worst of this, and I’m loath to even mention it. Okay. Here it goes. When I queried this same agent, I made an assumption I should not have made. I used the title Ms. And it turned out this agent was male. It was a unisex name, but an uncommon one for males. So, yes, I wrote Dear Ms. Agent. And if that wasn’t bad enough, in the heading I wrote: Query for Ms. Agent.

This agent must have been used to that, though, because he kindly sent me two websites that showed photographs of him. It was a very subtle way of letting me know. I think my face turned seven shades of pink that day. Tip #3: Do a lot of research on the agent. Find pictures if you can. Make sure you have the gender correct. Don’t assume!

Okay, here is the other mistake I made…with the same agent. (Poor, poor guy.) He asked for a 30-day exclusive, and I happily gave it to him. Fool that I was, I couldn’t query anyone else. After all, this was an exclusive. Thirty days passed, and I heard nothing. Tip #4: No exclusives! At least not ones that last a month.

But even after the 30 days expired, I decided to be kind and wait still…without querying anyone else. When I finally emailed him to see what was going on, he wrote back he still hadn’t had time to read my manuscript. So (and this is so stupid I want to bury my head in my desk chair) I waited without querying anyone else! Dumb, dumb, dumb. Tip #5: Even if you are waiting for a response from your favorite agent in the whole wide world, keep querying!

It gets worse. So much worse.

This poor, sweet man, who didn’t take on unpublished authors and whom I’d mistaken for a female received a phone call from me. And I hung up. Yes. You heard me.

Okay, let me backtrack.

I’d been upset that I hadn’t heard back from this agent regarding my work and it had been months. When I attended a writing conference, paying extra moolah to have my next novel critiqued by a well-known author, I broke down and told her my tale (minus the embarrassing bits), and she recommended calling him. “Only because he requested the manuscript,” she said.

So I gathered up my nerve, found the phone number of his agency, and made the call. Except it didn’t sound like an agency office. It sounded like someone’s home answering machine, so I thought perhaps either I’d called his home instead, or called the wrong number. So I hung up and tried to decide what to do next.

I’d forgotten people had Caller ID.

So my phone rang, and when I picked it up, it was him. I felt a little faint, and everything I wanted to say evaporated out of my head, and I might have squeaked, I don’t know, but suddenly we were having a conversation and I felt weak and anxious yet thrilled at the same time…

Tip #6: Get Caller ID. And leave phone messages, even if you aren’t positive you’ve reached the right number. Although, honestly, you shouldn’t be calling an agent anyway unless they’ve asked you to do so. Really.

So this poor, lovely, dear man was very gracious. He said his readers had read my first three chapters and liked it. But my synopsis sucked. (“That’s me!” I quipped happily. “My synopses suck!” As if I was gleeful about this. Dumb, dumb, dumb.) Still, he was too busy to read it himself, but he would try. Yes, he would try.

Tip #7: Don’t act happy to hear that anything you write sucks.

Well, long story short, it never happened. I moved on. And wrote more novels. When I finally found the right agent for me, I had learned some valuable lessons.

So, faithful reader, please don’t make the mistakes I made. I’m not proud, and it rivals the embarrassment of the time I called the fire department thinking I had a gas leak, only to discover the odor emanated from my son’s diaper. I’m still trying to get the several shades of pink out of my cheeks from that mistake.

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